From silence to voice, taking stock

How have SHGs empowered Indian women? What does the Global Gender-Gap
Report 2006 say about Indian women? These questions and many more were
addressed a recent international conference at Bangalore.
Shoma Chatterji
has more.

In a new, globalised economy, the need to be concerned about the impact of
globalisation on women is increasingly significant. This is a need that is felt
across the board - rural-urban, agriculture-industry-services,
educated-skilled-unskilled and so on. A number of questions have arisen in
recent times. How have self help groups (SHGs) empowered Indian women? How has development-induced
displacement influenced the lives of women and children who have been thus
displaced? What does the Global Gender-Gap Report 2006 say about Indian women?
Is the bifurcation of women's lives into realms of the social and the economic a
forced one? Has this been determined not by the women themselves, but by those
who simplify the problem and deal with its parts rather than understand the
whole and its interlinking complexities?

To address these questions and many more, and to explore the possibilities of
alternative solutions, Christ College and Centre for Social Action, Bangalore
and Drik India, a photographic initiative in Kolkata, jointly hosted an
international conference on 26 and 27
November, 2007. The conference, titled 'Women in Emerging Indian Economy -
Silence to Voice - Problems and Possibilities', was supported by Fredskorpset
(FK), a government body under the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).
Case studies, empirical research and successful initiatives from the state,
market and civil society were the key tools in the conference deliberations.

Researchers, academicians, policy makers, gender experts, NGOs, voluntary
organisations, media organisations were invited from across the country to
participate and share their experiences in different fields. There were also
inputs from international areas too, such as Sri Lanka Tanzania and The
Philippines. The conference was segmented into different areas:

While new methods are invented to make life easier for less privileged women, their degree of empowerment remains a matter of grave concern. The conference drew attention to this issue with feeling,
objectivity and diversity.

(a) Role of women in a changing economy - national and international perspective
(b) Mainstream development paradigm - a critical appraisal from a gender perspective
(c) Changing nature of work
(d) Changing agricultural sector
(e) Health of rural and urban women
(f) Women bringing changes in rural economy - national/international perspective
(g) Micro-credit - merits and demerits of promoting women entrepreneurship at the grassroots level
(h) Women in emerging economic sector
(i) Changing gender role in media - from silence to voice
(j) Development and displacement

In her keynote address, activist and journalist Padmashree Patricia Mary Mukhim
of Meghalaya presented a paper on the Global Gender Gap Report 2006, which
surveyed 115 world economies. She pointed out that while the World Economic
Fourm placed India way ahead of some advanced nations like USA, France and Japan
so far as political empowerment is concerned, the participation of women in the
economy, their educational attainments and access to health is way below these
advanced countries. India ranks 20th in political empowerment and 110th in
economic empowerment. Indian women constitute a meagre eight per cent in the Lok
Sabha and three per cent hold ministerial posts. In India, work-force
participation of women is 34 per cent in the labour force and 21 per cent in
technical and professional workforce. Comparative figures of women-participation
in the work force in the US show a percentage of 60 and 55 respectively.

The Global Gender Gap Index measures the difference between the sexes in matters
of economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health,
survival and political empowerment. Interestingly, the Gender Gap Report throws
light on the lesser-known facts about women's economic empowerment such as the
duration of paid maternity leave, maternal mortality rates, and access to
skilled health staff for childbirth.

Mukhim's paper also discussed a study in which the Institute of Social and
Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore, working with NFHS, drew samples from 100,000
women in the age-group of 15-50 years across 26 states. The percentage of
menopausal women was highest (31.4) in Andhra Pradesh. The study added that the
percentage of menopausal women was higher in rural than in the urban sector and
that the highest incidence was among women aged between 29 and 34 years as
against the natural menopausal age falling anywhere between 45 and 55 years with
an average of 51 years. Medical findings, according to Mukhim's paper, show that
early marriage among girls, the trend of malnutrition among girls and women,
lack of family support and the tension of having to eke out a living to
supplement the family income lead to early menopause.

Smita Premchander, Secretary, SAMPARK, a Bangalore-based NGO, said that
according to figures arrived at by the banking sector, India has around 3
million SHGs (Self-Help Groups) which give loans to around 40 lakh households
through extended credit. According to NABARD, the record for repayment of loans
from SHGs to banks is more than 95 per cent. She added however, that the default
rate is very high in case of subsidised loans that mainly cover BPL (Below
Poverty Line) groups but the record for repayment of unsubsidised loans is
almost 99 per cent and women do not default in repaying loans because they
immediately apply for the next loan.

From a conference exhibition by Drik-India, a photographer's collective: Women in the Cosmopolitans is a series of photographs
taken by Swapan Nayak, showing women belonging to a completely different liberalised and cosmopolitan niche, who
have shed all inhibitions in a spirt of partying and nightclubbing day in and day out.

Of the total SHGs, 90 per cent are women-only groups according to NABARD's
figures. Why are there more women than men in SHGs? On the basis of her
experience with SAMPARK, Premchander pointed out the reasons. Women are (a) easy
to discipline, (b) wait patiently, (c) take small amounts between Rs.10,000 and
Rs.20,000, (d) repay soon and easily, (e) permit external leadership and
control, (f) easy to train as they are flexible, (g) expectations are low.
However, inviting the active participation of women in SHGs ultimately comes
down to using women rather than empowering them.

Rangan Chakravarty, media producer and editorial consultant of Ananda Bazar
Patrika, Kolkata, made his presentation on 'Women and the Media through
Television'. He pointed out that violence is very much a part of the entire
process of communication in television. The systemic violence by television is
characterised by the marginalisation of the majority. By banishing the poor from
the realm of images the media renders them invisible because the have-nots,
which includes a large percentage of women, are considered a nuisance, a burden
that disrupts the smooth passage to a global, consumerist world. Invisibility,
he underscored, is a major and strong weapon - 'out of sight, out of mind'.

Chakravarty insisted on television's need to: (i) raise a voice against the
woman's body being made a site for the nation's morality; (ii) question and
debate on how and why women are increasingly made targets of political violence
and (iii) recognise that women are the worst sufferers of economic violence.
Representation, according to him, need not necessarily mean empowerment because
representation also depends on which women get represented in the media, how and
in what context.

Dr Walter Fernandes, Director, North Eastern Social Research Centre, Guwahati,
pointed out how globalisation will add to the woes of women who have already
been displaced in the past due to political reasons and ethnic conflict because
globalisation has led to large-scale acquisition of land by the corporate sector
in general and the private sector in particular. He added that large-scale land
acquisition for profit-oriented industrialisation also led to large-scale
mechanisation raising unemployment levels persistently. Forced displacement
makes women internalise the dominant ideology as a coping mechanism.

For example, when outsiders enter a township, they bring along with them the
ideology of consumerism and material affluence. This influences the male
residents of the township who begin to spend a large part of their income on
clothes and entertainment, leaving women with little share to run the family
even when the men's incomes rise. Forced to seek economic alternatives to feed
the family, many women often get into prostitution. In most mining towns in
Jharkhand for instance, a specific area called Azad Basti has evolved over time
where men who leave their families behind to work in the mines, visit this place
to buy sex. Development-induced displacement triggered by globalisation, would
deprive women of whatever little autonomy they had.

From the conference exhibition by Drik-India: Dalit Women in Rural India, a photographic oddyssey by Sudharak Olwe into the living hell that is the life of the Dalit woman in India who remain excluded from all women-centric bills and laws discussed in and passed by the Indian parliament.

Gloria Ramaine de Silva of the Center for Family Services (CFS) Sri Lanka, in
her presentation on 'The Changing Agricultural Sector - A Gendered Approach',
explained that the participation of women in the agricultural sector in Sri
Lanka has diminished over the past two decades. She added that in spite of
upward social mobility brought about by free education and health care, the
overall status of Sri Lankan women has come down. Gendered social norms, armed
conflict, slow economic growth, accelerated development programmes, combined
with the chronic apathy and lack of political will among legislators have
resulted in blocking the attainment of gender equality and equity in keeping
with international norms.

Ichikaeli Maro, Chairperson, Tanzania Media Women's Association (TAMWA) in her
paper on 'Women in the Emerging Economic Sector' pointed out that in most
societies in Tanzania, the woman who could not produce a male offspring ran the
risk of being divorced and the man would marry another woman to keep the family
line going. This led to large-sized families because wives would wait till a son
was born and large families led to greater poverty. She underscored that
proponents of gender equality picked four priority areas to better the condition
of women. These are (a) education, (b) legal literacy, (c) economic empowerment
and (d) political participation, which were adopted immediately after the
Beijing Conference in 1995.

The conference explored and assessed the role of women in the changing economy
and the role of the state, market and civil society initiatives under the
present globalised economic environment. It identified some of these challenges
in terms of possible creation of pockets of resistance, unequal growth,
polarisation, coping with new reforms in the constitution and last but not the
least, a critical understanding of who would be the ultimate beneficiaries of
these changes. It went on to study how alternative institutional mechanisms and
innovative practices could strengthen gender relations in developing nations.

The Indian woman keeps fighting many wars on different fronts. The battle is the
battle of life where she also must encounter her share of oppression and
humiliation. While new schemes are devised and new methods are invented to make life
easier for less privileged women, their degree of empowerment remains a matter
of grave concern. This conference drew attention to this issue with feeling,
objectivity and diversity.

Shoma Chatterji31 January 2008

Shoma Chatterji is a freelance writer based in Kolkata, and a member of NWMI. She is the author of 16 books, including 'Kali - The Goddess of Kolkota' and 'Gender and Conflict'.

Marisha Fonseca
It is true that economic empowerment will lead to an overall improvement in the status of women. Poverty is often the root of all evils.

February 03 2008, 9:34 AM ·
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Reshma.B.Maitra
Is this the only aim of educated women:
"young women, dressed in short and tight, lacy high street fashions, occupying more space in public spaces and making much more noise than necessary" ?
There are un-educated women waiting to be educated, semi-literate women waiting to be computer-literate and so on..

February 11 2008, 12:15 PM ·
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